Both parties must look again at what it means to be a Union

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Gareth Young (Lewes, CEP): In Jack Straw’s latest salvo against the Conservative’s policy of English Votes on English Matters (Living with West Lothian, Prospect Magazine, October 07) he generously warns the Conservatives against Little England-ism and a slide into "narrow English nationalism". The inference being that an English parliament comprised of Westminster MPs without an English executive is somehow a narrower more introspective form of nationalism than Scottish Labour’s Scottish Parliament and Government (nee Executive).

Thankfully though Living with West Lothian spares us the abuse that Jack has previously levelled at English nationalists; this new salvo is more an offensive against Conservative plans than it is against English desire for Home Rule. It’s not the first time that Jack has publicly trounced English Votes on English Matters, and with the Democracy Task Force due to report on the West Lothian Question one has to wonder whether this latest offensive is a pre-emptive strike in the battle to come. In the red corner we have a Labour Party that draws much of its Westminster majority and frontbench talent from Scotland and Wales, thanks to a constitution gerrymandered against England. And in the blue corner we have the Tories, equally determined to gerrymander it back the other way to secure Conservative hegemony over matters English in the UK Parliament. Neither party, I would contend, is remotely concerned with doing what is best for England, for England’s sake. There is the false and naïve assumption by both that there is little or no distinction between what is best for England and what is best for the UK, an assumption damaging to both England and the UK. This is a party-political dog-fight, it is not about good governance for England, and neither is it about giving political expression to England’s feeling of nationality.

For the large part Jack’s arguments are not arguments against English self-governance: they are arguments against the diminution of Westminster authority; they are arguments to preserve the absolute sovereignty of the Crown in Parliament, and; they are arguments to support the continued treatment of England as the rump of the UK parliament, with Scotland and Wales as semi-autonomous appendages to England. This is not a Union of Nations, it is the unionist’s view of England and the UK as one as the same, indivisible from one another culturally, politically and constitutionally. The Conservatives are no better. For them England matters for one reason and that reason is political control. To accuse them of narrow English nationalism is laughable.

Both sides need to step back from their entrenched positions, to look again at what it means to be a ‘Union of Nations’. A holistic approach, with a new understanding of what sovereignty means, is what is required in order to save the Union (not from Scottish or English nationalists but from the Labour and Conservative parties). Fairness dictates that each nation – not just Scotland - has the right to decide the form of government best suited to its needs, however unpalatable that may be to Westminster's present incumbents. Equally important is the recognition that it is with the people of each nation that sovereignty rests, to be exercised through their own national institutions and ceded upwards (rather than assumed by as it is now) to the governing institutions of the United Kingdom. There is no going back on the Scottish Claim of [sovereign] Right that was agreed to by Gordon Brown, Menzies Campbell, Alistair Darling, John Reid and Charles Kennedy amongst others.

The decision lies with the people, not with the Democracy Task Force, and most certainly not with Jack Straw. The English Question (which given the nature of the UK constitution is also the British Question) is a question that has to be answered, and only the people of England can answer it.

A slimmed down populist version of Jack Straw's Prospect article is available in yesterday's Telegraph.

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